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Mike, thanks for the link to Seth's excellent post. I do take issue with this paragraph, though: """ And then we need to consider the rise of the Kindle. An ebook costs about $1.60 in 1962 dollars. A thousand ebooks can fit on one device, easily. Easy to store, easy to sort, easy to hand to your neighbor. Five years from now, readers will be as expensive as Gillette razors, and ebooks will cost less than the blades. """ I own a Kindle and like it very much, but that sounds like Amazon.com PR. My points: 1) Why quote the ebook price in 1962 dollars? The reality in 2011 is that Kindle books in general are too expensive, particularly when comparing their cost with the paper counterparts (think about variable costs in paperbacks, logistics etc; it is pretty obvious the cost reductions are not being fully reflected in consumer prices). Given the current situation, I see no evidence that ebooks will cost less than razor blades, ever. 2) "easy to hand to your neighbor", sure, if you dont't mind being without your entire collection, or if you have several spare Kindles (but you are limited to sharing books among just a few Kindles). The whole point of DRM is to hinder sharing anything with your neighbor. 3) I totally support librarians pushing for ebook lending solutions, and not only for the sake of the future relevance of libraries, but because I want to have better options for sharing my ebooks with my friends (actually, anyone who does not live in the US cannot lend Kindle ebooks at this time; meanwhile Amazon.com is very happy selling them to us via "free" 3G). Otherwise, a great post. Cheers, Luciano On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 6:41 AM, Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Seth Godin is not a library professional -- he's a marketing guru with > a string of best-selling books and a blog that manages to be both > insightful AND brief on an astonishingly consistent basis. > (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ -- highly recommended). So he's > outside the library world, looking in, and has a track record of > seeing far and clear. > > Which means he's probably worth paying attention to when he writes > about The Future Of The Library, as he does in the newest post on his > blog: > http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the-future-of-the-library.html > > To summarise: "The library is a house for the librarian ... [Kids] > need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find > and use data). They need a library not at all ... We need librarians > more than we ever did. What we don't need are mere clerks who guard > dead paper." > > -- Mike. > -- Luciano Ramalho programador repentista || stand-up programmer Twitter: @luciano